New Intel firmware now sees USB disks formatted for Mac!

[desktopguy]

Hi,

Just noticed with the latest firmware (4.2.20) that any HFS+ formatted USB disks now show up in FrontView under the USB Storage devices as HFSPLUS. It also shows up as a backup destination! Can anyone confirm that this is new functionality. This would be a MUCH better solution to installing either either free EXT filesystem under FUSE or the payed Paragon EXT add-on.
NOTE: All my clients use macs so accessing backups is a pain if the ReadyNAS goes down.
Hopefully you won't get all the standard errors you see when using a NTFS formatted disk - will have to test...

[sphardy1]

This functionality has been in the 4.2.x firmware for many releases now - since 4.2.13 at least - and is a consequence of the version of linux upon which the ReadyNAS firmware is based

Note that HFS+ journaled drives will only be mounted as Read-Only. For Read/Write access the drive must not be journaled but that means you will be prone to data corruption if you were to unsafely remove the drive or suffer a power outage for exaple. Bottom line - there's a reason that functionality is not advertised; it is not reliable and therefore not recommended

[desktopguy]

Thanks for the heads up Sphardy. I had been formatting disks as EXT3 as far back as the ReadyNAS X600 revA.
First time I had noticed this - mind you I normally buy new USB disks for backup which are invariably formatted for Windows.
I'll run a few backup jobs as a test on my own test system and see how reliable and fast it is.
I was running NTFS disks for a while but the contestant error logging and slower speed made me switch back to EXT3.

Please note: The HFS+ Journaled USB disk did show up as a backup destination. (if it was indeed read-only)
No doubt this will lead to a few extra support questions...

[desktopguy]

Ha! Just noticed my status - ReadyNAS Newbie!
Tested my first unit with v2 firmware in 06' and started deploying later that year when the firmware hit v3 and the AFP performance increased!
Must be a testament to their reliability that I maintain close to 40 units and have only a hair over a dozen posts...
That, or I am just not social enough : )

[chirpa]

sphardy wrote:
Note that HFS+ journaled drives will only be mounted as Read-Only. For Read/Write access the drive must not be journaled but that means you will be prone to data corruption if you were to unsafely remove the drive or suffer a power outage for exaple. Bottom line - there's a reason that functionality is not advertised; it is not reliable and therefore not recommended

Our WNDRMAC router has support for read/write on HFS+ Journalled. We will look into porting that code over to the ReadyNAS kernel.

[sphardy1]

That would be very welcome if you can do it - please keep us updated

[peet1]

A big +1 here too.

[mdgm-ntgr]

And +1 here too

[chirpa]

Looks like that code port from the router team never happened. New ReadyNAS models left that responsibility to a Paragon driver: http://www.marketwire.com/press-release ... 769125.htm

I'd assume that extra royalty fee is padded into the system cost.

[desktopguy]

Hi,

I have been testing HFS disks in the new ReadyNASOS 6.06 running on a ReadyNAS Pro6.
So far - no good.
First test was formatting as hfs journaled on OS X 10.8.
Backup job failed - unable to write to disk.

Second test was formatted as straight HFS without journal on OS X 10.8.
Backup job failed - unable to write to disk.

I thought I might be able to format the disk from FrontView but as far as I can tell - there is no option to this!
Next will test NTFS and mate see if the system recognises exFAT.

[jezpas]

I have a hard drive with two HFS partitions, but readynas only sees and mounts one of them (the wrong one!) any tips on how to mount the second partition?

[mdgm-ntgr]

You could possibly try to do it via the command line. But you'd also need to unmount it manually before removing the USB disk.

What OS and version are you running on your ReadyNAS?

[jezpas]

Realized the visible partition was actually FAT...

I have SSH enabled so command line could work, I'm on OSX 10.8 and RAIDiator 4.2.23 on an Ultra 4

[mdgm-ntgr]

So what format is the partition that is not visible?

[jezpas]

That one is HFS+ (Mac Os Extended (Journaled))

(It's actually the old HDD from my mac, just switched to a solid state drive and wanted to keep my iphoto and itunes library on the NAS instead of the ssd, the small partition is the mountain lion recovery partition whereas the one I'm after is... well everything else)

[mdgm-ntgr]

I don't think 4.2.23 can mount that. Hook the USB drive up to your Mac and transfer the data across your network to the NAS

[jezpas]

Tried that - Estimated time: 2 days 😞

[jezpas]

I do have an airport extreme and could hook it up to that and share the harddrive over the network and add a backup job from frontview, but I can't figure out what remote protocol should be used, or which credentials (if any?).

Any ideas?

[mdgm-ntgr]

Can you share the disk connected to the AEBS to Windows machines? Use one of the Windows/NAS options, put in the I.P. address of the AEBS and the sharename of the USB disk and see if that works

[jezpas]

It almost worked...

Only problem is that it only works when securing the drive with accounts and that way it won't show anything else than what's in the account's folder. Naming the share accounts after user accounts on the hd didn't work either.

Tried authenticating with the base stations name and password but to no avail, using a hard drive password (and having the harddrive name as user) also didn't work.

Tried adding it as an nfs share but I get an error message along the lines of invalid path

[nasischijf]

For the record: I can confirm a HFS+ formatted (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)) usb 2.0 disk being mounted on OS6.1.4. Not sure if I leave it this way or format it EXT4 though. :lol:

[mdgm-ntgr]

Yes ReadyNAS OS supports that while RAIDiator does not.